Posted
by
Soulskill
on Tuesday May 31, 2011 @09:12AM
from the posted-from-my-wood-burning-tablet dept.

iONiUM writes "Last year, greenhouse gas emissions rose to a record amount of 30.6 gigatons, according to estimates from the International Energy Agency. From an article at the Guardian: 'Professor Lord Stern of the London School of Economics, the author of the influential Stern Report into the economics of climate change for the Treasury in 2006, warned that if the pattern continued, the results would be dire. "These figures indicate that [emissions] are now close to being back on a 'business as usual' path. According to the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's] projections, such a path... would mean around a 50% chance of a rise in global average temperature of more than 4C by 2100," he said.'"
jamie points out a recent report that the cost of solar cells has dropped about 21 percent this year, leading to predictions that solar power may become cheaper than nuclear and fossil power within five years.

You can NOT have a story about solar power without a prediction somewhere with the ole "in the next 5-10 years". It's amazing that 15 years of reading such articles, the solar power industry always seems to be 5-10 years away from a major boom.

Sort of like the Fusion is 20 years away and has been for the last 50 years.Or the car of the future. All someone really has to do is pick up Popular Science from 1973 to 1980 or so and you will see pages and pages about solar, wind turbines, alternative fuel cars, fuel cells, electric cars, gas electric cars, Stirling engine cars and so on.It is funny but progress always seems to be much slower or much faster than predicted. The early home computer crowd really missed out on the potential of the Internet.

If you do accept history, then you can see that the cost of solar cells has been dropping steadily since their invention and demand has been increasing rapidly since their invention. Initial cost in 1954 was $250 a watt and it has steadily declined to about $1 a watt (for the cell itself).

Demand has increased at 20 to 40% a year as the cost has gone down. (Demand curve, efficiencies of volume production, etc... basic economics).

You don't need a crystal ball. Fortunately, there is no "silicon cartel" to restrict the supply of raw materials so people who are expert at manufacturing (such as GE) can predict their costs accurately.

There are lots of excellent alternatives to fossil fuels coming down the pike: solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal, fuel cells. I like the idea of solar cells on every rooftop, with hydrogen fuel cells in the basement to capture the surplus daytime power and recharge the electric cars overnight. I also like the idea of a windmill at every major intersection, to power a square mile or so of residences and businesses.

Solar photovoltaic technology is advancing, both in efficiency and in cheaper manufacturing costs. I think ultimately solar will provide 20-25% of people's electric needs.

And transportation is going to be electric, as batteries improve. Hybrid car sales are huge, and every manufacturer is getting into the act. They're somewhat expensive today, but economies of scale and improvements in the tech will only bring down costs and increase profits. Probably in 20 years every car on the road will be either a hybrid or fully electric.

What'll be interesting will be to see just how much impact this eventual shift away from combustible carbon fuels has on the climate. The scientific community largely agrees that humans have caused global warming, but what happens if we stop being the cause and it still gets warmer? All that carbon we've already produced is to blame? Or is it a few major volcanoes in the past century? Or climate shifts that have little to do with human activities? Should be an interesting 88 years coming up; wish I could be around to see it happen. But my daughter will, I hope.

Even if we immediately stop burning any fossil fuels, it should still get warmer. It takes hundreds of years for the carbon cycle to take the excess out of the atmosphere. We're committed to continued warming right now. The only thing we can do is commit to less warming or more warming.

Also, maybe try to prevent/reduce pollution of the oceans, to restore algae. But that's a tall order, because everyone's fishing the hell out of it and basically destroying the food chain out there. I don't see any near term mitigation for that, unfortunately. If it were up to the Asians, they'd deplete much of the ocean's stocks to extinction. Maybe fish farms will help, eventually, except that they're not healthy for some reason.

We're emitting 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. Every person on the planet would have to plant tons of trees every year to keep the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere constant. We simply don't have enough land to hold that many trees. We've tried adding iron to the ocean to help algae production, but it didn't work out. You can read more about carbon sequestration [wikipedia.org].

Wow, I think you need to provide a link to a credible site for this one. I am betting myself that the housing industry requires far more trees to be cut than the cattle industry. Most grazing pastures are at altitudes that typically on pines/spruces like to grow, plus, they (ranch managers) like the trees in the pastures to provide weather coverage for the animals.

Go to google.com, type in the words "amazon" and "cattle." There are so many hundreds of credible sources, it would be silly of me to pick one. The housing industry doesn't use wood from the old growth forests, those are too hard for their needs. Instead, they use soft, fast-growing trees like firs and pines. And on the rainforest spectrum, the Kapok (a typical tree from the amazon rainforest) is far more likely to be used to make down for mattresses and pillows, than lumber for a house.
No, economical

I like the idea of solar cells on every rooftop, with hydrogen fuel cells in the basement to capture the surplus daytime power and recharge the electric cars overnight. I also like the idea of a windmill at every major intersection, to power a square mile or so of residences and businesses.

You like some really goofy stuff. First of all, only about 15% of roofs are suitable for solar. Second, only so much of the country is suitable for solar. Third, windmills make noise and small ones are basically worthless as the large ones produce in more conditions and more windmills means more points of failure. Fourth, hydrogen is an incredibly stupid way to store power, especially in your basement since it rises and will just come up into your house if there is a problem.

There are lots of excellent alternatives to fossil fuels coming down the pike: solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal, fuel cells.

Hmmmm....not so much.

Solar thermal looks like the only viable option and that's still unproven. Solar voltaic has a long, long, long way to go yet. Wind is improving nicely, but is limited in many areas. Nuclear, by far, is still are best, strongest option. Geothermal is applicable to a tiny number of locations. Those that have tried it in other, non-classical geothermal areas tend to create earthquakes and general geological instabilities. Fuel cells are still extremely expensive and nowhere near cost effe

Those that have tried it in other, non-classical geothermal areas tend to create earthquakes and general geological instabilities.

Those that have tried it in classical geothermal areas tend to create earthquakes and general geological instabilities. Plus, they have to figure out a way to dispose of a bunch of toxics that are coming up out of the vent and collect on the turbine blades. Locally it's mostly Arsenic but there are plenty of other constituents.

Wind and solar are basically the only viable technologies.

In a nut shell, in order of promise, both immediate and the next two decades we have, nuclear, wind, solar-thermal, and maybe...possibly, iffy, solar-voltaic.

PV solar has been a viable means of producing power since the 1970s, when PC PV modules could repay the energy cost of their

Well, I would like to see it in details. First of all there were huge wild fires last year, and we got harsh winter too - so CO2 release can easily be attributed to this. Also winter made lot of not so smart people believe that global warming is a scam or not so serious as thought and released breaks.

Anyway, we need long term technological solutions. People are working on it. So let's hope it will be good enough.

Dammit, you made me undo my moderations! Burning wood doesn't add to CO2; that carbon came from the air when the tree was growing. It will be absorbed by the tree that will grow to replace it. If you plant a tree for every one you burn, the carbon is neutral. Fossil fuels add to CO2 because you're releasing ancient carbon.

Now, burning down forests on purpose to make more farmland does increase atmospheric CO2.

Your buddy with a wood stove and acres of trees is carbon neutral, the other guy who heats his home

Its really simple. People are stupid in analyzing risk. They tend to underplay risk that is common or that they control and exagerrate risk that is out of their control or is unusual. If eating say garlic hamburgers gave you a 10% risk of death by heart attack, they wont bat an eye. But if there was a 1% chance of death from vampires, then they would gladly eat garlic hamburgers. Death by vampiric attack is more attention getting than heart attack.
Is nuclear power risky? yes but the consequences are argu

People fear Nuclear power because the dangers are terrible. People don't fear coal power because of all the successful lobbying by the coal industry. That anyone can look you in the face and say the words "clean coal" is beyond astounding. The fact that coal is terrible, however, does not make nuclear great. The simple truth is that humans have demonstrated themselves to be generally incapable of safely operating nuclear plants under capitalism, which is how the entire world is run. (Ask China's leaders how

The simple truth is that humans have demonstrated themselves to be generally incapable of safely operating nuclear plants under capitalism, which is how the entire world is run.

So EVIL CAPITALIST nuclear plants have killed far less people than hydro or coal while the Glorious People's Communist Nuclear Power Plant at Chernobly killed large numbers and spread radiation across Europe, and that means that capitalist reactors are bad?

Chernobyl was a Soviet reactor, which meant that not only was it run to the benefit of the nomenklatura and the military, but that it was run by people who lived in Moscow, hundreds of miles away, and could have cared less what happened to Ukranians.

I don't know what standard of competence you're measuring the industry on, but one major incident (caused mostly by a natural disaster) in several decades of nuclear power is a pretty damned good track record in my book.

If the consequences of the one major incident are bad enough, then one major incident is one incident too many.

The main reason people fear nuclear power irrationally is that it's very difficult to model the risk of nuclear power, and proponents of nuclear power have gone out of their way to make it harder. And of course the risk of an abstract, ideal nuclear power plant is different than the risk of a nuclear power plant built by the lowest bidder, publicly rather than privately indemnified.

So whine about it if you want, but the situation exists for a reason, and whining about it doesn't change that.

The fear outshines the facts. A picture of Godzilla will outweigh a hundred statistics saying how dangerous other methods of energy generation are.

The only downside to nuclear power is the fact that contractors can get away with failing to do their part. If there are laws placed to hold people culpable (perhaps something that the company would be immediately nationalized if serious misconduct was found), this would be minimized.

The reward is more than worth the risk. No CO2 emissions. No pollution to th

The main reason people fear nuclear power irrationally is that it's very difficult to model the risk of nuclear power,

And modeling the risks of global warming is easier how? Seems to me it's a much, much tougher nut to crack.

I see 2 main reasons people oppose nuclear power as a solution to carbon emissions. The biggest is that they just don't consider carbon emissions to be a serious problem. The next, and very close behind it, is how much easier it is to find problems than solutions. With electrics cars ar

It's really easy to blame people for being irrational in the abstract, but if you take into account real-world problems, it's not at all clear that people *are* being irrational. Just because someone doesn't agree with you doesn't mean that person is irrational.

If nuclear power were safe, it would be possible for utilities to build nuclear power plants without government indemnification. Insurance companies would weigh the risks, and write the policy, charging the appropriate market price. This cost w

jamie points out a recent report that the cost of solar cells has dropped about 21 percent this year, leading to predictions that solar power may become cheaper than nuclear and fossil power within five years.

Which in turn says:

If we can get solar at 15 cents a kilowatt-hour or lower, which Iâ(TM)m hopeful that we will do, youâ(TM)re going to have a lot of people that are going to want to have solar at home,

Basically, they are hoping to be competitive with consumer rates and are decades away, at best, and if ever, from being competitive with base load rates. That's an idiotic statement of someone trying to drive stock prices which have absolute no connection with reality.

For solar, it would literally be a major break through to provide peak load competitive prices and they are no where near being close to being competitive with base load generation. Even moreso, voltaic requires HALF the pri

For solar, it would literally be a major break through to provide peak load competitive prices and they are no where near being close to being competitive with base load generation. Even moreso, voltaic requires HALF the price of base load to be competitive with base load as it can only generate power half the time. Only solar-thermal looks to be able to ever be price competitive with base load pricing and even that is just now coming out of the gate.

99% of all home owners will NOT get out there every 2 weeks to wash off the solar panels

Maybe that's necessary in the desert, or near an active volcano, or somesuch. The company that runs our solar array doesn't bother washing the solar panels, because they found that the labor costs of washing them outweigh the benefits of the additional power. Instead they just size the array slightly larger to account for dust buildup, and let the occasional rainshower do the work.

Solar also requires the homeowner to understand electricity... maintain that battery pack or understand the back feed inverter and know to go downstairs to re-set it after a power failure because it will drop off when power is lost to protect line workers and unexpected backfeed.

Most installs will be grid-tied and not require batteries. As for resetting the inverter after a power failure, I think most

I have two sets of solar panels - one 10 year old set that's wired up conventionally to a single inverter, and another 8-month-old set that uses per-panel microinverters.

According to the very nice graphical display of power generation the microinverters provide via a built in web monitoring thingie, I average about four hours each day operating between 90% and peak generation.

Installation of the original set of panels was a major PITA because UL delisted the inverter after it was installed. Getting a massive piece of equipment down off the wall is easy, getting the replacement back up, not so much. But once that one startup issue was dealt with, the system has been 100% reliable and has required no repairs. As for the microinverters, it's early days yet, but they've been completely reliable so far.

As for washing the panels, yes, doing that more often increases output, but in my experience, not by that much. Around here the windows need to be washed twice a year so the panels get done as part of that. No big deal.

And as for all this "resetting after a power failure" - it appears your experience with grid-tie systems is seriously out of date. My 10 year old inverter handles power failures automatically. Aside from monitoring, I haven't had to touch the thing once the replacement inverter was installed. Ditto for the microinverters.

Finally, you appear to be conflating grid-tie and off-grid setups. I agree that a fully off-grid setup isn't easy. I have battery backup as part of my original system, but since the batteries are only used when there's a grid failure they haven't needed to be replaced. (And most grid-tie systems don't need them at all.) An off-grid setup that charges and discharges the batteries every day is going to require a lot more maintenance. And when solar is the only energy source the system has to be overbuilt in the fashion you describe (just not as much as you claim). And you probably care more about keeping the panels clean when they are your only power source.

But the vast majority of solar systems are grid-tied, not off-grid. So most of your issues simply don't apply.

Now, perhaps you'll say my experience is unusual. Yes, it's only anecdotal, but I know three people with similar solar setups in the area, and their systems have all worked flawlessly since they were installed.

... this continues to happen. Every year, even though standards continue to get stricter and stricter, this continues to happen.

Why? Why bother, I mean? What, exactly, are we hoping to accomplish by trying to develop stricter emission standards year after year? We're obviously not really solving the problem... and although granted, we may be possibly slowing down the rate at which it would otherwise happen if we didn't do anything, it doesn't take a genus to realize that if the measures you are

In case you haven't noticed, fossil fuels are being depleted, and will all be gone pretty soon anyway. Oil will be gone in ~50 years. Coal will be gone in about ~100 years. So all these carbon emissions will eventually stop whether anybody wants to make a legislative effort or not.

I'm all for solar and wind evergy, but they cannot replace hydroelectric, fossil fuel, and nuclear generating facilities. They can only suplement them. The primary challenges, beyond cost, are as follows:

1. Supply cannot be adjusted to demand. My understanding is that wind is especially bad for this, as it is windiest in the evenings, after major industrial energy consumers have closed down for the day. We currently have very few options for storing generated power for later use. Batteries and capacitors are nowhere near ready for this task. There are a few hydroelectric stations that pump water up in to large resevoirs during the night for use during the daytime surge in demand. The areas where wind and solar are most effective, there is often little in the way of hills and water, making resevoir-based energy storage impractical. Also, resevoir storage requires the costly construction of a resevoir, pumps, and an entire hydroelectic generating station.

You might think that wind and solar could be used to provide baseline power, while "traditional" coal and nuclear adjust to peaks. Unfortunately, this is only partially true. Many PLWR and BLWR nuclear designs (almost all American designed plants are one of these two types) are not able to idle. This means that if the load on the plant falls beyond a certain level, the plant must perform a full shutdown or risk heat damage. This might not sound too badm but these same plants take at least a full week to restart, and require lots of electricity to do so.

Hydro is able to adjust it's output very rapidly, however there are only so many locations where hydroelectric dams can be installed. People often cite massive untapped locations far away from existing populations. Excellent! Now all we need to do is build costly and inefficient long-distance transmission lines to carry that power to where it will be useful.

Coal is also able to adjust output quickly, but, well... it's coal.

2. The second problem is that of dealing with a phenomenon called "reactive power". This is when voltage and current on an A/C line are thrown out of phase. Ideally, as voltage reaches it's peak, so does current. If you're voltage and current get thrown more than a few degrees off, you're home outlet may still be delivering 100 volts and 15 amps, but not really either at the same time. First you get 110 volts, but low amps, followed quickly my undervoltage and full 15 amps. This means that the usefull power on the line is diminnished.

Reactive power occurs as a result of inductive loads such as electric motors and transformers. As the coils in the motors rotate past the magnets, or the electric field rises and falls in a transformer, these devices become generators. This "reactive" generation is always slightly out of phase with the input power, and so the power that they feed back on to the grid causes voltage and current on the grid to skew slightly. Multiply this effect by the number of inductive loads on the grid (refridgerators, industrial equipment, televisions) and you can start to have a real problem.

Electrical generation sources that employ large turbines are able to adjust the magnets inside their generators to help counteract reactive power by producing power that is out of phase, but in the opposite direction.

Traditional wind turbines are unable to do this, though I believe some newer designes can, at least to some degree. Solid state inverters such as are used to interface solar cells to the grid are not able to to this at all, and so there is a very real limit to their usefulness on the current power grid.

Anyhow, I'm all for wind and solar. I just don't think they are able to provide a complete solution. Nuclear seems to be the way to go, but it must be done right. The Canadian Advanced Candu Reactors look like a viable option. They are designed such that they cannot melt down, produce relatively safe waste, and are capable of idling quite safely. I don't know why everyone insists on using dangerous PHWR designs.

Tends to exacerbate drying and wetting conditions. So you get persistent droughts in places that were arid, and persistent flooding in places that were wet to begin with. Sea levels rise, meaning that you now have levee walls to protect cities that used to be dry. Storms have more energy (more heat == more energy) and therefore do more damage.

Weather patterns are driven by convection cycles [eiu.edu]. The convection cycles have a lot to do with lattitude and proximity to the tropics. When you add heat to the convection cycle, it changes shape in a fairly predictable way, just like when you turn up the gas on your stove, the burner doesn't suddenly explode, but rather the flame expands. It is in fact possible to push the cycle past a point where it does change dramatically, but dramatically here is a bit of an understatement. It's the kind of drama

The second and third scenarios mentioned are genuine worries, but the first really isn't. The worst case scenario sees sea levels rise something in the region of four feet in a century, while the expected case is between 1 and 2 feet. All major cities can handle that. More worrisome is increased acidification of the oceans and the disruption of oceanic food chains which would put even more pressure on food prices which are already increasing very rapidly.

Let's see, the early IPCC reports warned us of 50 million climate refugees from flooded coastlines but 2010. I set up a couple of cots in my basement to help out but no one's come knocking at my door yet. In fact, as far as I've seen, no one's really displaced yet. There's a country in the south Pacific that leased a big chunk of Australia for just such and emergency but I haven't heard that they've moved there yet.

There's been a big problem with weather (i know, in know, weather and climate aren't supposed to be mentioned in the same article but you did already.) but that seem to the connected to a short period cooling and warming of the Pacific ocean called La Nina and El Nino.

Let's see, the early IPCC reports warned us of 50 million climate refugees from flooded coastlines but 2010. I set up a couple of cots in my basement to help out but no one's come knocking at my door yet

First of all, assuming those 50 million to be spread evenly, this gives you a 0.7% chance of getting one refugee. But keep that cot in your basement, there's a 50% chance that one refugee will come to you in the next 140 years.

If you had actually read that paper you mention, instead of spreading oil industry propaganda, you would know that the author estimated that there were 25 million people who had to leave their homes because of climate problems in the mid-1990s and the trends indicated that this amount

Well sure, carbon credits are far from perfect, but it provides a financial incentive for a company to relocate to a less-heavily-regulated country (so they can compete and stay in business).

FTFY

Unless the West is willing to go to war with China, India, and the other countries that are rapidly increasing their carbon emissions and who have absolutely no intention of slowing, anything the West does to cut back will have a negligible effect and serve only to reduce the standard of living for everyone and cause more deaths among the poor.

Just because it makes you feel good deep down in your little green cockles doesn't mean it's a good thing.

The amount of arable land is increased and plants grow faster and larger

Really? I suggest you look up desertification - increase in global temperatures seems to be decreasing the amount of arable land, not decreasing it. Also, you seem to be under the impression that the result will be a uniform change of 4 degrees. This is not what the models predict - some areas will cool, others will increase by significantly more than 4 degrees. The average temperature will increase by 4 degrees (according to these models).

So if tornadoes are a "certain connection" to global warming, how come I'm freezing my ass off in New England? (And not just this year, but also the last 3 winters.) Summer has also been cooler than normal.

Winter wasn't *colder* than normal. It was *wetter* than normal. You're freezing your ass off because your house isn't properly insulated (not your fault--very few houses are, but that's why). You've been cold because it's been wet, and we've been having a lot of weather coming down from the north, rather than up from the south. The lack of sun due to all the cloudy weather has protected your house from solar gain, and kept it cool. The cold night temperatures, which are typical in may, have coole

So if tornadoes are a "certain connection" to global warming, how come I'm freezing my ass off in New England? (And not just this year, but also the last 3 winters.) Summer has also been cooler than normal.

Wow, you really are nothing more than a troll now, huh? That's too bad, I remember when your comments were cool. For those who really want to know the answer to this and have been confused by this troll, global warming is global, and what is going on in your backyard is only part of the picture; hope this helps.

Weather is complex. Global Warming may have a large or small effect on these tornadoes. The Global Warming debate is more about politics then science. Back in the 70's and 80's they were complaining about smog (as it was a major political issue, it can be seen, smelt and noticed) Rules and regulation made automobiles and factories to greatly reduce smog in cities. However during that fight they were the anti-car group of political active environmentalist, who really has been trying to get rid of cars. As

To entertain your strawman for a moment, so for you, global communism is worse that the destruction of the globe? You'd rather see the state of Florida under water before, god forbid, we share even a little bit of the wealth of the industrialized world? Better dead than red I guess?

5) Blame the climate scientists for not making a big enough deal about it... actually, obscuring the truth by lying about it and causing a whole lot of angsty doubt about the reliability of various measurements and how they have unequivocally supported the environment all along.

Actually most of the people who question the need to do something about global warming have logic that works like this:
1.) Person A says that we must give the government greater powers in order to prevent disaster from global warming.
2.) Person A lives an extravagant lifestyle that results in more CO2 emissions in a week than the average person generates in a year.
3.) Conclusion, person A does not really believe in global warming, they just want to increase government power (and perhaps make some money off of it).
If the people who are preaching about the need to reduce CO2 emissions are not doing anything to reduce their carbon emissions, why should I?

You forgot the part where they take temperature records wihch show no trend and create a warming trend by 'adjusting' it, then average that new trend out across large areas of the planet so that a few results from New Zealand which showed no warming become a warming trend over a significant part of the Pacific.

Basilcally the data is garbage, the models are garbage and the 'science' has been totally politicised.

And I'm sure you have tons of research and data to back up your claims?

Even ignoring all the data and research currently available, there is some rather large and tangible evidence that temperatures are warming, namely Greenland and pretty much all areas north of the article circle. Perhaps you may need a refresher in physics, but it takes A LOT of energy to melt the amount of ice that's disappeared over the past few decades just in those two areas alone.

I personally think this is overplayed... The worst we can do is to put the CO2 levels back to what they were in the dinosaur days... Yes, I agree that the atmosphere this time is much thinner, and I also agree that it will create a different equilibrium of weather patterns. As always, we will get by, however...

People have died of cancer from the earliest of times -- they just called it something else, and quite often "a curse."

Carbon dioxide is a naturally occurring gas that is even generated by the human body. We exhale it all day long! "Taking in CO2" also happens all day long unless you can somehow magically clear it from the atmosphere prior to inhaling. (At which point, you will get amazingly high from having too much O2)

the only silver lining in the current rash of tornadoes in the country's midsection is that the country's midsection is also home to more conservatives, who are more likely to doubt climate change gloom and doom

but with twisters bearing down on the usa's conservative areas, conservatives have no more reason to doubt climate fears, and a solid incentive to make sure the atmosphere is less violent, which means less warm, which means less CO2,

Actually while net energy will increase with rising temperatures cape (or the amount of wind sheer) is expected to drop thus counteracting the increase in energy. The net effect is expected to be fewer but possibly more violent tornado's. The outbreak this spring in mostly fueled by la nina which is an increase in cool waters in the norther Pacific, not something that would be expected with rising global temperatures.

you're confusing short term and long term changes, and local effects and global effects. overall, global warming is real and speaks of a more violent atmosphere, all short term and local fluctuations aside. besides, i'm just asking people to wake up to the larger picture. sometimes it takes a small and short term jump that can be, but shouldn't be, dismissed as a short term or local trend, to open peoples minds to the larger truths out there

What? I responded to your "the tornado outbreak should wake people up to global warming" with the actual expected results of long term global warning on tornado occurrence and you think I'm the one confused about short and long term changes?!?

but with twisters bearing down on the usa's conservative areas, conservatives have no more reason to doubt climate fears, and a solid incentive to make sure the atmosphere is less violent, which means less warm, which means less CO2, which means changes in their politics

one can hope, at least, that the twisters are a wake up call for some about climate change. it doesn't mean balmy weather, it means atmospheric violence

Since these particular tornadoes seem to be a side-effect of the disappearance of La Ni

You somehow believe this was the worst year for tornadoes, or even more laughable that this imaginary peak was caused by global warming? Get a clue, get some facts. Most fatalities in U.S. by tornadoes was in 1925, most tornadoes was in 1953, the most tornadoes in a short period of time was in 1974 (184 in 16 hours with 330 dead). There always some Al-Gore type alarmist who after every interesting weather event wails, *this is due to global warming!*. What a load of ignorant bullshit.

Or perhaps the "creeping" is because people tire of the NWS and local new channels crying wolf every time there is a thunderstorm. I for one, never replaced my weather radio because I was tired of being woken at 3AM because NWS heard some rain falling somewhere within 20 miles of me. How many times do they need to broadcast those damn "thunderstorm warnings" at 3AM? Jesus, wake me if there is a tornado, I can deal with a little rain just fine.

nobody deserves to die you fucking retard. if you think that's my message, you're only broadcasting your poor social skills and low iq. my message is "please wake up and see the light." not "haha, you died." jesus what a spatic asshole you are

That is bullshit. The product has existed for years. All of the production of the very first year was purchased by a single party. You still can't get any. If they're selling out, why are they not increasing production and making more?

Then stuff gets nasty. We still have plenty of coal. Dirty, polluting, highly toxic lignite coal. Stuff that loves to turn water tables into cesspits that only exotic variations of bacteria can live in.

Lignite coal is cheap, and if push comes to shove, laws (like basic labor, environmental, or safety ordinances) will be set aside to get it.

Want a real solution to the energy problem? Campaign for R&D on the latest generation of nuclear reactors (Gen IV) with an emphasis on traveling wave reactor desi

Over 100 years ago, Arrhenius predicted it would take 3000 years [wikipedia.org] to double the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. At this rate, it will take less than 200. Time and again, we've seen the actual increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide and associated warming exceed predictions. It cuts both ways -- it might not as be bad as we predict, but it may be worse. Let's expect the best, plan for the worst, and prepare to be surprised.

Gee, it's a good thing we started driving cars and avoided the manure problem, even though "skeptics" back then imagined all sorts of insurmountable problems with cars. Now can we switch to alternative energy sources and likewise avoid global warming, even though today's skeptics claim it's a socialist plot to control everyone by destroying the economy?